Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > James, Felicity

James, Felicity

Felicity James is an English lecturer at the University of Leicester interested in Romanticism, Unitarianism, life-writing, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Barbauld. You can also hear her in Episode 24 of our podcast, discussing the lives and letters of Charles and Mary Lamb.

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The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons.

articles by, [65] 19; [76] 7

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20221201101554 Felicity James on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, SF 76

‘String is my foible’

Felicity James on Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

A tarnished silver teapot. A tin of buttons, their parent garments long decayed. A bundle of yellowing letters, in my mother’s hand. Look: here she is, smiling in her nurse’s uniform in the photograph that used to sit upon the mantelpiece. But now she’s propped against moving boxes, still not unpacked. These are a few of the reasons why I cannot sit in my own front room, although there are more. It’s no use turning to Marie Kondo in this sort of situation; what I recommend is Elizabeth Gaskell. The narrator of Cranford (1851–3) knows all about hoarding. ‘String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.’ And elastic bands – or, as Cranford puts it, India-rubber rings. Oh, don’t talk about India-rubber rings! ‘I have one which is not new,’ our narrator tells us, ‘one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago. I have really tried to use it: but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.’
20201015094509 Foxed Pod Episode 24 | The Lives and Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb

Episode 24: The Lives and Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Dr Felicity James, author of Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth: Reading Friendship in the 1790s and current custodian of Charles’s writing chair, introduces the Slightly Foxed editors to siblings at the heart of a literary circle. In their Tales from Shakespeare, gentle-hearted drunken-dog Charles wrote the tragedies and Mary, often chided for laughing, the comedies, and together they penned letters using different coloured inks. From a murder in the home and time in private asylums to conversations with Coleridge at the pub, dissertations on roast pig and salons in their London lodgings, we explore the lives of the Lambs and their friendships through books.
20200301144551

Streets, Streets, Streets

Felicity James on the letters of Charles and Mary Lamb

I’m deep in mountain territory, with a pot noodle and a stack of Post-its in front of me. It’s past midnight, and my final undergraduate exams are just around the corner. Feverishly, between forkfuls, I’m wandering on high over hill and vale; I’m crossing the Alps; I’m brooding on the Wordsworthian sublime. Every so often, I’ll note down an Important Thought on my pink Post-its. Nature! Morality! Mountains!

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